The Press: Martyr Milton

When, last December, rotund, boyish Publisher George Fort Milton, 45, had to sell his once prosperous Chattanooga News to Grocer Roy McDonald, publisher of the Chattanooga Free Press, he made himself a martyr to New Dealers. Because Milton had fought Tennessee Electric Power Co. with all his might, and T. E. P. (subsidiary of Wendell Willkie’s Commonwealth & Southern) had fought back, leftist journals like The Nation and The New Republic printed tearful articles implying that T. E. P. was largely responsible for driving Milton’s News to the wall.

Then Publisher Milton founded the Chattanooga Tribune, backed by such New Deal bigwigs as Senator George Norris, father of TVA, and Francis Biddle, Solicitor General of the U. S., was launched with Franklin Roosevelt’s blessing on page 1. But to New Dealers, George Fort Milton remained a martyr. Last fortnight, in a special Willkie supplement, The New Republic rehashed its old charge that T. E. P. killed the News, named Candidate Willkie as the martyrer. (The New Republic sold its first printing of 38,000 copies in 24 hours, ordered 35,000 more next day, then another 25,000.) The Democratic National Committee also raked up the same accusation.

But martyrdom does not sell papers. Last week the fledgling Chattanooga Tribune, five months old, suspended publication. Wrote remartyred George Fort Milton, announcing its demise: “Insufficient working capital and other adverse circumstances . . . have made it impossible for the . . . Tribune to continue. . . .”